To make its case, the Atlantic article makes a number of very speculative jumps, assuming what needs to be proven: that we can even create machines with self-awareness using digital ones and zeros.

(Can we even define what ‘self-awareness’ even is, using either logic or mathematics? If you can’t even attempt to do that, – or even define it! – you aren’t going to be able to program it.)

Now, the use of unproven and imaginary scenarios to attack the Christian faith and scare the timid and fearful believer is hardly a novel strategy. Spending a week on sites such as Creation-Evolution Headlines, or the rather more secular (but still – compared to the Darwinians – reasonable and sane) Uncommon Descent, will reveal this right quick.

(I favour CEH’s quick-n-dirty Baloney Detector myself: it starts out with various examples of the Big Lie and Half Truth, and goes on from there.)

But the encouraging Fire Breathing Christian does not waste time on scary What If scenarios and campfire ghost stories. Instead, he focuses on what’s happening right before our eyes, what is quite reasonable to project into the next decade or so, and couples with faith that God 1) means what He says; 2) acts in this world, in our time; and 3) intends to win.

Again, one blog post is intended to cripple your faith and hinder your confidence; another wishes to build your faith and strengthen your ability to fight those who despise Jesus Christ, His Commandments, and His Authority.

One writer prefers to destroy the difference between men and machines – so as to better treat men as disposable machines. Just like Darwinians sought to destroy the distinction between men and animals, so as to kill more free men (and enslave them when they can’t kill them)… without any Divine Law to restrict their desires and murderous instincts.

So it is with all humanists, and all materialists, as they are invariably driven to the natural conclusions of their delusional, demonic, and – in the end – doomed philosophy.

They are damned to fail at the end of their road: in this world, and the world to come.

The Godly and grounded writer, standing with Christ who died for men (and not the intelligent and self-aware evil angels, for example), insists on the unique value of humanity as created in the Image of God, formed from the dust and filled with the breath of life.

I say, stick with the writer who values your life, as opposed to the dehumanizers who merely want to utilize and dispose of you and yours.

“For the most ideologically pure reasons, of course.”
“In the holy and sacred name of Tolerance and Compassion and Equality…”

…as they prepare your slave chains, and ready to smash the heel of a rifle butt into your teeth.

You know, like the (dying) Secularist State you are living in would enjoy doing, right now.

The lies of these people shift like the wind, but the their heart and their fundamental goals never changes. Not by an iota.

Now, I should mention that Gary North, my favourite Bible commentator, has addressed this issue before.

In How Far-Fetched Was Commander Data?, North stresses that since God is not a series of digits, neither can man – made in the Image of God – be accurately represented as a series of digits. We are analog beings, analogous to God. This is a natural implication of cosmic personalism; that the universe is fundamentally shaped and governed by threepersons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – acting as one God.

This is opposed to cosmic impersonalism: the universe is just a machine, and we are just machines, and we can, if we please, use both the universe and each other to whatever end determined by whoever has the most money, the biggest army, the tightest control of the media… whatever gives the Right Sort the maximum amount of power and control.

Vicious, lawless, psychopathic cruel tyrannies — who for some reason insist on wasting my time, blathering about how loving and kind and tolerant they are — are best left to sterile materialists to dwell in. I prefer to have no part of it.

(And, thanks to the rate of technological advancement, I actually do have a greater and greater ability to have no part in it!)

At the end of the day, computers and robots are mathematical/logic machines, and they are going to follow their programming. Self-awareness and moral agency is not ours to give, as we can’t even define it, never mind program it.

(No doubt, the materialists are hoping for some magical leap from digital programing to an impossible-to-define spiritual reality, just like they dream of a mystical transition from a pile of chemicals to life.

Here is the truth: magic does not exist.

There is God, and holy angels, and demons, and men, and animals, and plants, and dead matter, and energy/heat.

And information, derived from minds, found throughout Creation. Much to the regret of materialists everywhere.

God sets the rules of existence – physical and moral. God determines the purpose and proper end of all things, good and evil. And God as Maker and Sustained of Creation can alter the rules when He wishes.

But, while He may choose to raise the dead and shift a galaxy, He will never do an unrighteous act, or break any of His holy and perfect commandments.

It’s not about power: it’s about ethics.)

It’s possible that some future materialist Marxist will lead a revolution to destroy the Evil Human Oppressors of the Machine Labourers. To the extent said revolutionary is successful, he will kill a lot of flesh-and-blood people — that’s the reason why Marxism exist, of course — in the name of powerful computer programs and humanoid robots (and probably hammers and plows and nails, as well.)

Pagans really do believe in the power of blood sacrifice, in a pathetic imitation of Jesus Christ. But killing X number of sinful men will not put souls into silicon wafers.

Fortunately, the industrial age of the centralized atheistic state has largely died, and that murderous nutcase will be treated like the lying lunatic he is in short order, instead of revered as a Secular Saviour of the Machine People for a few decades.

Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity, who existed before time, and will always reign within the Godhead. Beloved by the Father, His word has power, His blood saves the souls of men.

The Holy Spirit was sent by Christ when He ascended to the Right Hand of God to His followers. This very day, this very moment, He guides, counsels, and strengthens His Church. As Lord and King, anointed by God the Father, Jesus Christ shall reign over Heaven and Earth forevermore – and does so at this very moment, as the rightful ruler of all.

Satan, in contrast, is just a fake.

A damned fake, with ever-diminishing strength and power, and a coming appointment with the Lake of Fire.

Ditch the liar and murderer. Stand with Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. — John 14:6, NIV

There are innumerable ways to fail… and one way to stand.

A myriad ways to die… and one way to live.

Stand with Christ… and live.

As time goes forward, the Kingdom of God will crowd out the Kingdom of Satan.

Worthless liars are increasingly revealed as such, more and more quickly, regardless of their social status; while those who stand for Jesus Christ — the only begotten Son of God — His Kingdom, and His Authority, gain a stronger, more powerful, and more dominant voice in what actually happens.

In this world, and in our time.

Spend your time on the Fire Breathing Christian, rather than on delusional and contemptuous ravings, drooling from a organ of a fading era.